Mmmm...Tarzan. Part 3!
An awkward pause followed as each waited for an explanation. That pause just kept getting larger until it felt as though this silence had acquired a physical form. Finally Billy sighed.
"Look, Andrea," he wanted to pause, but knew it would grow again, so he kept going. "I realize that I've been gone for quite some time--"
"Seven years, two months, and ten days," Andy quickly ticked off the numbers before smiling awkwardly. "But who's counting?"
"A very long time," Billy corrected. "And I can't say I really would have expected you to sit here waiting for me. It's perfectly understandable that you would leave after what happened, but…"
The pause came again, smiling at the space it created between the pair. But the pause realized that it would soon be pushed away again. It knew something must be done to secure its place in this relationship. And it knew just how to achieve this effect. It leaned close to the blonde woman and whispered in her ear.
"You think I went off and had sex with everybody!" She bridled under the implication.
"I didn't say that!" Billy cried defensively, though it really was what he was thinking.
"You were thinking it!" She stared into his face. "You still are thinking it!"
"Andy, if you'd just see things from my--"
"No." She said. "No. We are going to look at this from MY perspective. Okay?" She didn't give the pause a chance to butt in. "Which one of us ran off to another planet without saying good-bye?"
"Andy," his voice sounded like she was dragging a razor across his skin. "I was aging at a highly accelerated rate. I would have died."
"You didn't say good-bye." The pain this had caused her was so evident that he knew there was no point in arguing.
"And," she continued. "Which one of us allowed the other back into her life--and mouth--without asking for a single answer?"
He nodded slowly. "You did." It didn't take a genius to see that he was defeated.
"So then. If I am both the injured and more gracious party," she smiled broadly. "Then it is my word you will trust when I say there has been no one since you left."
"Alright."
"Why would you even think that, anyway?"
Billy opened his mouth to say it was Tanya's doing, which was partially true. But he didn't wish to pass the blame onto someone else. "I…overreacted to something Tanya said." He pulled a hand through his hair nervously. "She said that you were as bad as Melanie. But in retrospect, it was probably in reference to her…ah…primitive whimsical conceptions…"
"Say what?"
"Melanie's Tarzan fantasies," Tanya translated quickly as she passed by with her arms full of a subatomic welder. The girl paused to add something in her own defense, "And I *meant* that you're as bad as Mel is with those fantasies." She trotted off.
Billy looked back at Andrea, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. "Uh…. not Tarzan, right? Please tell me I'm not Tarzan in your head."
Andrea let a devilish grin pull across her face. Knowing it wasn't nice to mislead him didn't stop her from enjoying the sight of a grown man blushing.